Sunnyvale is a set of 250 odd snaps taken during last week’s W3C Web Services Addressing and Web Services Description face-to-face meetings in the Bay area.

At last! We’re on the Google Maps, though as my mate Pete noticed, we’re strangely located in the middle of the Atlantic. No arial photos, as yet, but at least I can now join the fan club headed by Glen. One interesting feature Jonathan noticed, the US version now also returns addresses in the UK. That’s going to confuse all those ‘mericans, somewhat searching for directions from “Auburn“.

Explaining to the kids how a scene in Futurama was inspired by a M.C. Escher drawing, I was surprised how the search results on Escher included a panel of his drawings. Seems like a nice new Google feature I thought, but was then unable to get the same results for Dali, Picasso or Monet although Magritte worked. Hmm were any other artists are given this special treatment? A quick spider hack using a list of artists names from the Google Directory found only one other: Chagall. I wonder if this response is triggered by the search data, or if these artists are the favourite ones of some Googlite, beta-ing away deep inside Google towers.

Update: and now maurice sendak.

Saltburn-by-sea is my contribution to the Memory Maps Pool.

The addition of a ’satellite’ button to Google Maps ‘Beta’ seems rather unimpressive compared to multimap’s ‘aerial photos’ which have been running for at least a couple of years now, and long before the invention of the term ‘AJAX’.

Here are some ‘fun’ places to try: Saltburn-by-Sea, Central London, Heathrow Airport and Avebury Stone Circle.

Hmm, first my mrs gets me with “there’s a mouse in the hallway”, then I start to believe the Today Programme on ‘King Tom’ but finally Sean gets me hook line and sinker. I have therefore earnt my son’s badge which i will now wear with pride until noon .. happy April 1st everbody!